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| Governance of Algorithmic Personalization from the Perspective of the Proportionality Principle |
| Chen Linlin, Yang Lumeng |
| School of Law, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310018, China |
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Abstract Legal personalization uses data profiling, algorithmic prediction, and real-time feedback to transform abstract rules addressed to unspecified subjects into differentiated decisions and arrangements of obligations. This provides new technical conditions for addressing the overinclusiveness and underinclusiveness of general rules, improving the adaptability of legal norms, and achieving individualized justice. In the practice of algorithmic governance, however, platforms and public authorities can rely on precise identification, risk classification, and behavioral tracking to impose more targeted obligations and restrictions on specific subjects. Rights protection, by contrast, still depends largely on uniform provisions, standardized appeal procedures, and abstract declarations of rights. The allocation of obligations is becoming increasingly precise, while rights protection has not been refined to the same extent. This gives rise to a “reverse value” tendency in legal personalization and may cause it to depart from its original institutional purpose of pursuing individualized justice.This imbalance follows a relatively stable logic of formation. Historical data may absorb existing institutional biases and reproduce them through variable selection, model training, and risk classification. Differentiated decisions based on statistical correlations can also turn group characteristics into adverse inferences about particular individuals, causing correlation to be mistaken for causation. Technological and institutional black boxes further obstruct explanation, challenge, and review. The entrenchment of labels and liability by association in credit sanctions, the construction of a “high-risk” persona in predictive policing, behavioral manipulation and differentiated pricing in consumer settings, and the quasi-legislative structures created by platform rules all display similar asymmetries between rights and obligations.Traditional legality review focuses on legal basis, legitimacy of purpose, and the appropriateness of means, but pays insufficient attention to whether a reasonable relationship is maintained between the capacity for technological intervention and the capacity for rights protection. The proportionality principle provides a basic analytical framework of legitimacy of purpose, necessity, and the balance of interests. Symmetry review further brings the relationship between technological intervention capacity and rights protection capacity into the proportionality analysis. The legitimacy of purpose requires that burdens imposed on specific subjects be supported by reasons commensurate with the degree of specificity of those burdens, and that the relevant risks and their substantive connection to the differentiated measures be explained. The assessment of necessity should not only examine whether equally effective but less restrictive alternatives are available. It should also examine whether existing technological capabilities can be used at the same time to improve mechanisms for explanation, evidence presentation, and review, and should distinguish whether inadequate remedies result from “technical inability” or “commercial unwillingness”. Proportionality in the strict sense should compare the actual burden imposed on the individual with the demonstrable gains in governance. The more general the asserted public interest is, the more fully its importance, likelihood of realization, and connection to the differentiated measures need to be explained.A corresponding accountability framework should cover the entire process of algorithm design, operation, and remediation. Before an algorithm is put into operation, impact assessments and the retention of design documentation should be used to identify bias and potential impairment of rights. During the operation, algorithmic outputs should be continuously checked through dynamic monitoring, third-party audits, tiered transparency, and individualized explanations. After the harm occurs, substantive human review, a reasonable allocation of the burden of proof, and external judicial and administrative oversight should be used to change the pattern of self-review created by closed internal appeals on platforms. The legitimacy assessment of legal personalization should accordingly move from asking “whether differentiation is permissible” to asking “whether precision governance is matched by rights protection of equal precision”, so that the growth in technological capacity is translated into the corresponding growth in rights protection capacity.
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Received: 18 December 2025
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2026, Vol. 56 
